Hi everyone,
My name is Rossen, and I am the Affiliate Manager at Moneybookers. As this thread also concerns our business with Full Tilt Poker, please see our official update on the situation below:
Our customers are the most important part of our business. That is why we have, from today, stopped accepting deposits made to Full Tilt Poker. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve become aware of a situation where Full Tilt has not honoured customer pay-outs and we’ve been working to try and resolve this issue on our customers’ behalf. Unfortunately this hasn’t been possible and today’s suspension of their license by the Alderney Gambling Commission has validated our decision. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers and hope you understand that extraordinary circumstances, beyond our control, have brought about this action.
Best regards,
Rossen Yordanov
You were being MADE aware long before that, but you had a policy of "fobbing off" your customers, whilst letting other unwitting victims to continue depositing into a "black hole". The fact that they had suddenly started breaking that "golden rule" that to prevent fraud all withdrawals are returned to the method of deposit up to the sum of said deposits should have alarmed you right away that there was more to this than a mere "technical problem".
Further, the fact that UK players couldn't get their money out by any means should have been MOST alarming.
Under UK law, YOU could find yourself liable to players' banks due to your inaction, and complaints are already being made to the FSA, who have granted you an e-money issuers licence. If the FSA feel that your lack of due dilligence has caused players to put money into an insolvent operation, and that you should have known that there were clear signs of such problems, you could find that license revoked, along with an embarrassing press release to cover it.
Most players EXPECT that when you accept someone for a merchant account, they have had to jump through similar hoops as players have experienced, and you are thus seen to be endorsing that merchant by continuing to allow them the merchant facilty to take money through the service, giving a false level of confidence to players that the merchant is able to safeguard their money.
This will now do damage to YOUR reputation, as it makes it clear that you don't have much in the way of ongoing monitoring of a merchant, and that you are going to be the LAST to notice that something has gone wrong.
It was just before the seizure was announced that players were finding that sums as little as $250 were hard to cash out, and when it was announced that non-US players were being limited to being able to cash out a mere $250 per week, it should have SCREAMED "funding crisis", as it clearly did with players.
Given that poker is played with MUCH higher bankrolls than most casino players have at risk, a paltry $250 per week limit should have shone like a beacon as a warning that things were VERY bad indeed. At this point, you should have at least prevented deposits greater than the amounts that could realistically be withdrawn on a $250 per week basis, and when even this paltry amount was too much for them to be able to pay out weekly, the deposit function should have been shut down in order to protect your customers, and should have stayed this way until it was demonstrated that withdrawals were again flowing back to non-US players on a "business as usual" basis.
If it is confirmed that the group is insolvent, and cannot pay back players, Moneybookers could find itself in the firing line as UK players look to their banks for redress under UK law. EU based players may have similar legal rights, and only non EU players will have a serious problem in making Moneybookers responsible.
Neteller and other ewallets could find themselves in the same position too if they continued to allow deposits when it became clear that the group couldn't pay anybody, not just US players.
This brings home the fact that our money is NOT as secure as we might think with these e-wallets, who do NOT have to protect us to the same level as banks do.
Whilst "FSA regulated" is often prominent on the website, the fact that balances are NOT actually covered by the UK compensation scheme, or it's EU equivalents, is only to be found in the "small print".
When UK and EU poker players find out, they may no longer be trusting enough to play with such large bankrolls, and this will be to the detriment of the whole online poker industry.
It could also be the first time that non-US players have had their money wiped out because of "this US issue".
I am sure many players will be angry about this all the while Alderney keeps them "on hold" pending the outcome of the investigation, which could be many months, possibly longer.